Welcome
to possibly the only English website in existence that is wholly dedicated to
the infamous "Robotech the movie (aka the Untold Story)".

No, this is not a website about the recent
"Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles" movie, nor the forthcoming live action movie
being helmed by Toby Maguire.

This website is about the 1986 film "Robotech the
movie", a co-production by Harmony Gold and defunct B-movie producer Cannon
Films. You may have never heard of this film, which is quite understandable. The
film was only shown for a month in Dallas, Texas from 25 July 1986 as part of a
test screening. Although it never received
a home video release in the United States, it did receive English language video
releases in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands in the late 1980's and into the
very early 1990's, as well as an English TV broadcast on South African TV in the
late 1980's. Despite the resurgence in interest in all things Robotech since the
early '00's, strangely this film hasn't been released on commercial DVD or BD, nor has
it been bootlegged widely, despite original UK VHS copies of the movie fetching
prices upwards of US$60.

The film, mostly based on the 1985 Japanese Original Video
Animation "Megazone 23", was made to cash in on
the success of the "Robotech" TV series and profits of the film were
planned to be used as capital to fund the follow up Robotech TV series, "Robotech
II: The Sentinels". Although
the film remained in Dallas cinemas for around a month as part of a test screening
and did "exceptionally well" at the box office (according to the
film's director Carl Macek), plans to release the film across the US on 1,400
screens the following month were shelved when the distributor, Cannon Films,
discovered teenagers and young adults made up the vast majority of the audience.
Cannon had already planned a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at children
and decided to either retool the film or change the marketing. Cannon Film's financial
difficulties scuttled plans to relaunch the film. The behind the scenes chaos of
the production of "Robotech the movie" caused it's director, Carl
Macek, to practically disown the film altogether. He felt the film
was a disaster area, mostly due to interference and changes forced upon the film
by producers at Cannon Films. This included cutting around a third of the "Megazone 23"
footage as well as including footage from "Southern Cross", the series which
made up the second arc of the "Robotech" TV series.

One of the most interesting things about the film is that
Harmony Gold (the producers of "Robotech"), commissioned the
Japanese production company who made "Megazone 23" (Idol Co Ltd), to create a brand
new ending for the film. This ending is completely different
to the original ending of "Megazone 23", and was included on video releases of
an obscure English dub of "Megazone 23 Part II" that was only released in Japan
with Japanese subtitles in 1987. According to a 2008 interview with "Megazone
23" director Ishigoro Noboru, the animation for this new ending was produced
by the anime studio AIC (of "Tenchi Muyo!" fame).

I created this website because I was really surprised at the lack of information, as well as the
great amount of misinformation that was on the web about this film. A lot of
sites actually claim that it was never released on home video in English, and
this is simply untrue. I've tried as hard as
possible to make this website as complete and accurate as possible, but if you
find something that's not correct or wish to add some more info, please feel
free to email
me. Thanks! This website was last updated on 23 August 2013. Please see here
for a list of pages updated.